Facebook has been great for what I need it for. I don’t use it like many people to network and chat with friends so much, but I do use it to keep people informed, link to my blog posts and direct them to other good stuff.

Over the years I’ve accumulated the maximum number of friends on my personal timeline and another good group of people following the page associated with my blog.

When they made changes some months ago controlling stuff I noticed the hits to my blog at Patheos receding and while my posts and links were not taken down I was getting much less feedback. I can only assume that whatever they were tinkering with was limiting my reach. I’m not a techie and I don’t have evidence, and I’m not necessarily accusing anyone of anything nefarious. Not being paranoid about it, but whatever they did and for whatever reasons, Facebook is not what it was.

So I’ve switched over to a new social media platform. MeWe is simpler to use, has no advertising, does not track you, does not share your information. Its free, but you only have a limited amount of space to post stuff, so if you want to put up lots of videos and pictures they invite you to pay a monthly fee.

The other thing I’ve found from switching to MeWe is that it naturally cleans up my friends list. While I have 5000 FB friends, I doubt if they all follow me or stay in touch after these years. Switching to MeWe means the ones who want to follow have scooted over with me.

So if you’re reading this, why not go to MeWe and sign up? Give me a contact request and we’ll be in touch. I’ll be posting links to my blog, my podcasts and commenting there the way we all used to do at Facebook.

While you’re at it, if you like MeWe, tell your friends. The more people who sign on the better.

The other thing this does is allows ordinary people to vote with their feet. If, like me, you feel creepy about Facebook (and the government) looking over your shoulder, just get out.

See how you like MeWe.